Thursday, March 11, 2010

Kids and Their Potential

I must say that after helping out at the daycare for almost 2 weeks now, it's been quite an experience. Every day is different and sometimes in the mornings everything can be pretty quiet, but then something happens during the day - there've been wonderful moments, fun times,heartwarmingmoments as well as exasperating ones. Dealing with little humans is definitely TOUGH, esp. 'coz some kids can't get along well if they're put together in the same room - it's understandable given their different personalities, but they have to learn to behave and control themselves so that they can live in harmony with other people later on.

Today there was a little fight between two boys and one of them cried. The guilty one apologized and the other one accepted the apology in between sobs and watery eyes. I was amazed at how easily the crying boy accepted the apology...and it reminded me of my own childhood where I held grudges so easily due to my sensitive nature - what a difference!

But then again everybody is different and they have different "weaknesses" to handle. Some kids at the daycare are so easy to handle. They never give us any problems and they cooperate very well to the schedule. Some are tougher to handle and that makes me realize even more how VERY HARD it is to raise kids (not just feeding them). You've gotta know each of their personalities and you've gotta know how to handle each of them. I've been a bit tired this week 'coz I have to learn to know when to be "strict" and when to be "less strict" with them (I'm still confused where the line is). It's easier to deal with the kids one-on-one, but once they're playing together, anything can happen!

It's not easy for me to learn to be strict and I'm still lousy at it. I don't know why but when I tried being stern to stop them from playing around too much, even when I gave them my stern stare and I didn't smile along when they kept on playing around, they didn't obey me as well as they obeyed my colleagues. Crazy thing was that I told R2 about this problem and I showed him my stern stare, but it only made him laugh like crazy. GRRRRRRRRRRR...He said I was too sweet to look stern. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...in other cases I'd consider that a compliment, but this would be problematic if I can't make them feel that I have some authority there. But anyway, I'm learning the art of being strict bit by bit ha ha ha ha ha...

I remember when I was a private English tutor, one day I got a problematic student who just didn't want to cooperate. When I asked him to read some text or do his tasks, he'd just smile at me playfully and disobey me. After some time, their parents decided to put him into a kind of language course 'coz I just couldn't handle the brat well enough to make him do what I wanted him to do.

One thing I realize even more from this training is that each child has different potential. I met one boy who wowed me yesterday 'coz he could create VERY creative and complex Lego "star ships" (without looking at any guidebook whatsoever - he just did it on his own in the playroom and he shared his creations with other kids). He's either almost 7 y.o. or he's already 7 years old. I went speechless when I saw his creations. I myself, even now, can't imagine making creations like that with Lego pieces. It's just beyond me...

I was talking to my colleague about this and she said that the boy's grandpa loved creating stuff and he'd been showing the grandson how to create stuff when they spent time together. Ahhhaaaa...now I understand where it all came from...he's probably gifted in that area (3D), but he's also got plenty of exercise with his grandpa. I can actually imagine him in the future, creating real 3D stuff - either buildings or sophisticated planes or whatever. I remembered to give him a compliment on his skills today (yeah, this is also something I'm learning to say to each kid after they do something well). I hope he realized that I really meant what I said. :-D

Anyway, that's the update about my training. I'm gonna blog-hop later this week.